The Intro (Part 1): The Basics

I have a lot I could talk about here, or rather rant about, but I'm going to restrain myself until you at least know who's behind the keyboard on this blog.

I am, to say the least, not a normal person.  Most of my wardrobe comes from ThinkGeek, and I'm a hardcore Apple fanboy (also known as a Mactard, a label I'll willingly step into) even though I see the company moving in the same general direction as Microsoft.  I like Mac best even though I actually acknowledge some Linux distributions as being intrinsically better.  I spend my free time (and an unhealthy amount of my non-free time) playing such niche games as NiGHTS Into Dreams and Darwinia and Dwarf Fortress, plus oldschool favorites like Starfox 64 and Super Mario 64... and I sometimes alternate that with useful productive things like work for my deviantART account, but lately that's been pretty rare.  I typically also waste a lot of time with websites like the ever-famous FAIL Blog, Very Demotivational, and Halolz, plus webcomics such as xkcd, Irregular Webcomic!, Housepets, Broken Plot Device, and Megatokyo.  Then there are those ever-so rare websites that are just plain beyond awesome, like LoadingReadyRun that I cannot stay away from even if I try.  So yes, I am a web addict.

Let's move on to the labels.  What can I be classified as?

I think of myself as all of what follows (and I've been called most all of these at some point or another): a geek, a goofball, a computer nerd, a good friend, wise, intelligent, a dreamer, an idealist, a gamer, a programmer, a designer, cynical, liberal, an artist, a thinker, a philosopher, weird... the list goes on, but for now that should suffice.

Stylistically, I'm defined by a few items of clothing that I'm rarely seen without -- my trenchcoat and driver's cap, my glasses, some geeky or witty t-shirt, my fractal bag (from my CafePress store, Fractalle -- I'm by no means above shameless self-advertising), and more recently a collar and tag or a bandanna around my neck.  I also think of myself as being far more stylish than I probably actually am, since my fashion sense has never really lined up with social norms.

Identity-wise, I take up a lot of different mantles.  In person, to most people, I am Jacob Van De Graaff; to some few others I am Cog Cyprian.  Online, there are nearly as many pseudonyms as there are characters by which I identify myself.  deviantART, and most conventional websites (discussion forums and the like) know me as Q-Lok, but others know me as Avalon, or as (again) Cog Cyprian.  Some people knew me as Nami the Chameleon for a time, while others knew me by the name Windman.  More recently, on Second Life, my name is Limerick Lexington, and for some time I went as Jacob "Q" Libris within the NiGHTS fandom.  For as many different names as I have gone through, I have likewise conducted myself in even slightly more different ways, dependent upon the situation -- I have been just as many different people.  And for those that know me beyond the limits of any one single name, it becomes even slightly more complicated.  They get to see a composite of different faces, of several of the different metaphorical masks and hats that I wear, and for them I become rather more complicated.

There are many sides of me, and this is only a general smattering of them -- in fact, a number of the most important roles and labels are absent from my lists.  This is by no means a complete definition of me, nor is it even a good outline... however, it does hopefully give the reader a reasonable starting point for knowing where I come from in my writing.

And for those who honestly couldn't tell from the amount I wrote on this topic, I am also the original king of tl;dr.  Welcome to my life.